Style and details
American Modern, Art Nouveau and Early Spanish Renaissance.
The architect captures something Venetian in his use of the waterfront location and the open loggia overlooking Strömmen.
Aim: to attain personal expression
Rosenbad was originally considered to be in American Modern style. This may be thought somewhat surprising, but especially in terms of ornamentation the description is not incorrect. Both Boberg and Wickman (see below) felt an affinity with North American modernism. Boberg's professional development is paralleled by the Chicago School, in which Louis Sullivan, the most important designer of the modern skyscraper, was perhaps the most eminent architect. This was a school in which attitude towards architecture, not style, was the unifying factor. The aim was to free architecture from the straitjacket of the academic style of architecture and to attain personal expression.
A common theoretical basis existed in the ideas of the French architect and historian Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who came to inspire nearly all the significant architects in the Art Nouveau school - the new style of the day. But the quest for a distinctive personal style did not prevent architects, both in America and in Europe, from deriving inspiration from medieval functional buildings, the Spanish Renaissance or oriental architecture.
Modest towers, rich ornamentation and Venetian waterfront setting
In Rosenbad, inspiration was derived mainly from early Spanish Renaissance architecture, as manifested in the cities of Salamanca and Segovia - a style that was freer, in terms of its design idiom, than the Italian Renaissance. This source of inspiration is clear in the modest towers of the façade, the departure from the laws of symmetry, the tension between a smooth wall and ornamentation concentrated in certain details that are finely chiselled out in the stone, like silver filigree work.
At the same time, Boberg also captures something Venetian in his use of the waterfront location and the open loggia overlooking Strömmen. For Boberg, the piazzetta and piazza with the Doge's Palace and the Grand Canal in Venice were unrivalled in terms of composition.
You can read more about Rosenbad's stylistic details and ornamentation under the heading Roses - a recurrent theme, above left. The Rosenbad restaurants takes you to a section about the restaurants and cafés in the building. The Rosenbad city block is about the two other buildings in the block: those housing the former Skånes Enskilda Bank and Stockholm Savings Bank.
